The Tower on Zombie Hill

After a couple of days of exploring around Killing Fields, I get restless and decide to go build a house at this nifty little place I had noted the last time I went that way. It has a sheer rectangular cliff (where I naturally put some Potemkin apartments) and a couple of small lavafalls and several waterfalls. I am a sucker for the lava/waterfall combination and therefore, a house is needed. It takes a whole long day of running to get there, so I spend the night in the Potemkin apartments and the next day I start to build.

Space is at a premium here – towering cliff walls will do that – so I build up instead of out. The other thing that’s at a premium are quiet nights: zombies moan all. Night. Long. I mean it’s ridiculous, like living next door to a frat house. These zombies party. They get down. They howl and shriek and groan into the wee hours and it makes me cranky.

It takes some time to complete the Tower on Zombie Hill but finally, after I’ve sailed over and denuded a few small islands of their beaches, it’s done. Now it’s time to do something about the zombies. In the absence of exterminators or friendly police, I must do it myself. Turns out there’s a small cave complex under my house, so I light that up, kill a lot of creepers and a couple of zombies and there, I think, that’s it for the night moaning. I am wrong. There are still zombies. Okay, perhaps the cliff? The cliff has a deeper cave complex complete with an astonishingly beautiful water wall and yes, it is full of zombies. I mean full. I barely escape with my life.

Eventually, I find the dungeon, which is camouflaged well behind a waterfall and some gravel. This is a lame dungeon – not even a chest, not even a pig saddle – and I suppose I understand why the zombies here are so active. Poor poverty stricken zombies from the wrong side of the tracks, with nothing better to do than howl around my tower at night. The contents of monster chests always fascinate me. Why do they hoard such a strange assortment of stuff? And why the pig saddles? Riding pigs is one of the most boring activities Minecraft has to offer – it’s so disappointing, the first couple times I tried it I thought I must have gotten a defective pig but no, it turns out that all any of them ever do is run around in circles in a small area - and not only that, to the best of my knowledge nobody has ever spotted a monster riding a pig. The elimination of the dungeon gets rid of the zombies and now, after a trip back to Killing Fields to pick up some pork chops, I suppose it’s time to restart my quest for lapis.

The Killing Fields are Lapisless

I am frustrated. There is no lapis here. The road to spawn is built and I’ve been through a couple of caves in the area. One of them beat my former diamond record - 12 diamonds! 12! The most I ever got before was 9. – and I even found the green record, which I’ve never had before. The green record, it turns out, is way better to my ear than the gold record. The monsters apparently have a hitherto unsuspected musical side to their nature. But lapis? No. No lapis. This means, I believe, that I am still living in the old world, despite the pine trees and pumpkins. Well, shit.

I set off, therefore, to find lapis. I found a biome that had birch trees and thought, okay, this has to be it. Driven by despair, I mined. I hate mining but I did it: dug all the way down to bedrock and then tunneled for miles in every possible direction. I found enough redstone dust to power a small city, iron galore, gold and even a few more diamonds, which is good, since I wore out my diamond pick, but no lapis. Therefore, there is no lapis here and I will never have blue wool. I am saddened by this, particularly since there is no cactus anywhere near my Killing Fields house. Therefore everything in it is orange or yellow or red or pink, which grows uneasy on the eye, no matter how appropriate the color scheme to the name.

To add injury to insult, I come extremely close to dying during my trek home to Killing Fields. Only extremely fast cheating – got into Peaceful Mode just in time – saved my life and my new diamond pick, helmet and sword. Cheating bothers me a little but honestly, who would not cheat Death if given half the chance? And he didn’t ask me to play chess, or twister for that matter, so it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of options here. Speaking of death, in the annals of geekery, I have started keeping an Excel spreadsheet of the ways I have managed to die. The spider/creeper combo attack is by far the most deadly, although creepers on their own are a formidable enemy. Only one zombie has taken me out so far and skeletons? Pah! I laugh at skeletons. They look scary but they are not so fearsome as they appear.

Inadvertent Slaughterhouse

I got a bit fed up with Minecraft for a few days. Endless, unceasing intimations of mortality plus headaches from too much screen time, not to mention the carpal tunnel, will do that to you. I couldn’t stay away too long though – I suppose it’s a good thing that I crave Minecraft and not heroin but I’m beginning to think the end effect is essentially the same – and I’ve been back in World 5 for a while now. While I was away I ventured to a bar I hadn’t been before and found myself, while there, in a long Minecraft conversation with two other addicts. My gods, it is just like a drug addiction. All we need are some gang signs and we’ll be set.

Back in Minecraft world, instead of going on home with my tail between my legs to ride the trains for a while, I took advantage of the extremely well stocked spawning hut on World 5 to get myself all armored up and equipped with tools and took off in a sort of southwesterly direction. Mostly, it was snow, snow and more snow. Mountains. Snow. This is, as I have mentioned, a pretty well explored and developed planet that used to be all snow and I was beginning to think that I would have to sail away again to find virgin territory when I happened on an abandoned boat. I love finding abandoned boats. It’s so sort of creepy cool – I mean, I know I built the damn boat and left it there but still, finding random boats gives me that sudden frisson of wondering just who the hell has been sailing around there.

I didn’t get very far in the boat – yet another ice sheet, what you gonna do? – but I got somewhere I was pretty sure I had never been before. There was a massive and amazing lava flow with the requisite burning trees scattered in front of it. I holed up for the evening right there and listened all night to the screams of dying farm animals. It was quite cheery; suited my mood. In the morning I ran around picking up pork chops and leather and I thought, okay, this is the place for me, this inadvertent slaughterhouse. The light from all the fires keeps the monsters away and, just like Scarlett, as pig is my witness, I will never go hungry again. So I set forth to build a wooden house of incredible fabulousity, a thing of beauty and a joy forever with three wooden floors, a deck and a glass pyramid of sorts on top. I like it but the nightly screams of anguish were beginning to get to me, not to mention the problem of where to store all my pork.

Therefore, I built a pond under the burning trees – this rescuing of farm animals seems to be kind of a theme - and now I have not just a lavafall but waterfalls galore. I like it here. Now, of course, it is time to build a trail to spawn, the inevitable marker of a finished home.

Zombie Zoo

I have a music room. This is not as fancy as the music rooms I have seen on other people’s Minecraft videos, where they use redstone dust to make connections and have entire raves and stuff. No, it is not as fancy: it’s three note blocks and me, thump thump. I can almost play Three Blind Mice and I am impressed with my bad self and my mad music skillz. The music room is nice and all but it is Not Enough and so I decide to head out adventuring the next day.

I find a cave fairly quickly – where were all these caves hiding when I was looking a few days ago? – and it turns out to be a giant whopper of a cave that just goes on and on and on ad nauseam. I find not just one but two dungeons and at the second one I had an idea. Zombie Zoo! Glass is a wonderful thing

It was a great cave. I left with enough diamonds, lapis and iron to outfit an entire town and so, I thought, okay, it is time to travel, to explore, to see what this new world of mine has to offer. And I set off again into the wilds.

Where a creeper killed me on my second evening out, in the middle of nowhere so that I will never be able to recover my diamond pick or all my lovely brick blocks. Bah. I’m going back to World 5.

Okay There Are Caves After All

I found a cave! Well, what I found first was a dungeon – a dungeon, like Ozymandias, buried in the sand. I am a heartless sadist who really enjoys exposing dungeons to the bright and merciless rays of the square sun, so I dug out all the sand just to watch skeletons be born and die screaming. Then I dug out the inevitable dungeon chest, hoping, as I always hope, for a record. No record, but given my current poverty this chest was maybe even better. A bucket! Some redstone dust! Three entire loaves of bread! (Why don’t monsters ever hoard diamonds?) Wow! I’m rich! And, and, over there, wealth beyond imagining, is some iron ore. I made a compass, walled myself into a corner and settled back to gloat for the night.

Then it was time to explore the cave proper. Given the paucity of my armor – there wasn’t that much iron - it’s not surprising that I died at the first zombie. It turns out that my house is really near spawn, which I had kind of thought. I figured this out by emerging from the sandy decline of my birth and immediately finding a sign that said That Way with an arrow. Yeah, less than 3 blocks, or, more precisely, an island and a half away. Not only that – is it possible I’m actually getting better at finding my way around? - I knew how to find the cave again. Just turn right at the house, through the woods, around the inlet, past the lava pool and there it was. Moments like these are why Notch, all hail, invented Peaceful mode and so into the cave to retrieve my death stolen objects and onwards.

Not a bad cave, all in all. Not the best I’ve ever been in, but I came out with nearly 60 iron, 4 diamonds, 50 or so redstone and 16 lapis. I wish there had been some gold and more diamonds and lapis, but I should not complain. Now I have a diamond sword and a really heinous purple bedroom carpet. What more can one ask of life?

Properly equipped at last, I turned to enlarging my house. It is quite fabulous now – I wish I lived there, actually – and it’s getting more fabulous by the minute as I cheerfully scalp every sheep in a three mile or so radius. This takes me over the prairie, where I find, yes, another cave. There are caves here after all. Phew. And on the way back, I find another ginormous clay deposit. Well, we all know what that means – soon it will be time for another house.

Brand New World

I spawned in a pretty place. This is a new world in more ways than one. There have been a lot of updates since I last started and here they all are: gray and black sheep, different kinds of trees and a ginormous pumpkin patch. Cool! I dutifully punch a couple of trees, make myself a wood pick, harvest some pumpkins and take off, looking for coal before it gets dark.

I don’t take enough pictures but trust me, this is an attractive, if not particularly dramatic, world. There are some floating islands that look enticing but they’re waaay up there and I don’t feel like dealing with it. What there isn’t much of, is coal. At last I find some – near a lava pit – and dig in for the evening. It’s weird to have stone tools again and be constantly looking for coal. I am spoiled.

I wander for a couple of days. I think I am probably going in circles – not having a compass or a watch is tough – but it’s okay. I pick up a variety of useful objects and then I come across one of the biggest clay beds I’ve ever seen. Well, that’s that then: I am fated to build a brick, or mostly brick, house right here. I choose a likely island, nicely situated on a sort of boundary between three biomes and begin construction.

One thing I’d forgotten about starting over again is that you have to kill a lot of cows. I’ve gotten used to leaving cows the hell alone unless they are seriously annoying – trying to push me off a cliff or refusing to get out of the kitchen, that sort of thing – so having to actively hunt them again is sort of a blow. They scream and make me feel guilty. Still, you do what you have to do to get armor and I kill cows. A lot of cows, because leather armor, while it looks cool, actually sucks. Don’t tell the road warrior. A skeleton nearly kills me in the water. A creeper nearly kills me outside the house. A spider nearly kills me – you get the idea. I need iron and I need it bad. Well, hmmm. Where do you find iron? In caves.

There are no caves.

This is unheard of. There are always caves. Minecraft is all about the caves. I run around my island, looking. No cave. I run through the woods to the north. Cave free. I check out the prairie to the west. Nope, no caves here. I head east into the desert. I find two caves. Two small, empty caves, not offering so much as a block of coal. I’m getting desperate so I go home and dig through my floor. Sure enough, there’s a cave full of zombies! Yay! Except. . except. .. there’s nothing in it but the two zombies and it dead ends after one smallish, dishearteningly empty cavern.

Well, this sucks and I’m not sure what to do about it. I can keep on looking but then I run the risk of losing my new house forever. I can’t build a road from this house to spawn without a compass and for a compass I need iron and redstone dust which I can find. . . in a cave. I could mine, yes, I could dig a giant hole and then I would eventually find some stuff but that is so, so boring I can’t stand it. I am at a loss.

Different Worlds, Same Grim Reaper

I ride back and forth on the railroad a couple of times – practice makes my minecart catching technique better – and then decide that it’s time for adventure. Time to seek out new worlds! New lands! New creepers! I’m going to leave by boat in the morning and see what I can find. I dither around a while trying to figure out what to take with me – all this brick, obviously, so I can build, and glass and a diamond pickaxe and, um, the fishing rod or some reeds? Netherrack or gravel? Redstone dust or a sign? Pumpkins or buckets? Tough choices but at last my pockets are full.

And then, I travel. I take the boat as far as I can and then head eastward, ever eastward. I cross a small snowy zone and then a pretty area that I like but it’s too close and I want to go far. I cross a bay that’s full of squids, more than I’ve ever seen before. I run across prairies. I make another boat and sail until I hit a huge ice sheet. I run over that and across an area of tundra that’s criss crossed with tunnels and caves and chasms. I dig myself shelters and keep right on moving, stopping only to scalp the occasional sheep. And then I stop at an imposing box canyon – like, literally a box, descending to a square lagoon and think, it would be kind of cool to build a house across this. Nah, I think, too unwieldy and there’s nothing else much here. But maybe I’ll just spend the night, dig down and make some windows into the center.

I do that and in the morning, when I hear all the monsters, I’m glad I decided not to live here. I dig out and up to the accompaniment of clinking skeleton and zombie death – and right into the hands of some five creepers and a couple of spiders.

Yeah, I die again. You know, before I started this blog I used to go weeks without dying. Months, even. Of course, I was playing on Easy then instead of Normal – I feel that it behooves me to play on Normal now, since I’ve been around so long – but I never thought that the two modes were frankly all that different. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I'm more adventurous now that I'm writing about Minecraft as well as just letting it impact my real life in not so healthy, addictive ways. Who can tell? The upshot is that I’m completely stone dead in two of my principal worlds. Fuck. What to do now?

No choice, really – I delete a world I barely remember and start from scratch. Stone tools, no coal, find shelter before nightfall - the whole thing. Here I go!